Using public restrooms while transgender

For most of us, using a public restroom is something to which we give little thought, except perhaps for a fleeting concern about cleanliness. But Nico Lang of Rolling Stone says that a survey found that “nearly 70 percent of trans people had experienced negative interactions in public facilities — from dirty looks to snide comments to physical violence.”
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More on guns at the RNC convention

Although the petition to allow guns into the RNC convention center has been denied by the US Secret Service, that has not ended the matter because the question arises as to what happens outside the Quicken Loans Arena that are after all public spaces where Ohio’s laws allow people to carry weapons openly or concealed. The city government and security services are grappling with this question and expect to issue guidelines by June.
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The Colbert emoji

Anyone who has watched Stephen Colbert for any length of time will notice that he has a remarkably flexible face, capable of a wide range of expressions. He could have had a successful career as a mime, perish the thought. It turns out that one of his signature facial expressions has been turned into an emoji. He also describes the tortuous process that has to be followed to have a new emoji approved and provides a range of other expressions that they may wish to consider.
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Cricket World T20 Update

West Indies and England have won their semi-final games against India and New Zealand respectively and will meet in the final on Sunday.

The West Indies v. India game today was a real nail-biter. India batted first and scored 192/2 in their 20 overs and this would normally have been a winning score but this tournament has seen teams successfully chasing extremely difficult targets and West Indies engineered a masterful chase, despite losing their star batter Chris Gayle in the second over. Lendl Simmons and Andre Russell engaged in some serious hitting late in the innings and they reached 196/3 with just two balls remaining.
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Another consequence of the crumbling US infrastructure

It is by now pretty much a given that the mania to cut taxes to enrich the wealthy has resulted in government being deprived of the necessary revenue to maintain its existing infrastructure and public spaces, let alone make any improvements to bring them into line with other developed nations. Anyone who has traveled to other developed and even many developing countries will immediately notice the difference in roads, airports, and other transportation systems and how the once-enviable public spaces of the US, such as its roads, parks, and libraries, are slowly decaying.
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Standing up for the things that matter at the time they matter

Watching the film Trumbo that I reviewed yesterday brought to mind a very old post of mine that quoted Trumbo extensively from a moving letter he wrote to a friend in 1967 that was published in the March 2004 issue of Harper’s magazine (subscription required). It asks us to reflect on what is really important in life, what is worth making a stand for, and how people use the flag and country to shift blame away from themselves for their unprincipled behavior.
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Cooper Union’s stand on bathrooms

The issue of who gets to use what public bathrooms is an increasingly contentious one with the state of North Carolina, for example, passing a law that would force transgender persons to use the facility according to the gender they were assigned at birth and forbidding local entities from doing otherwise. The new law also “prevents all cities and counties from extending protections covering sexual orientation and gender identity at restaurants, hotels and stores.”
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